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MORE brainstorming via faux case studies...or, what advice do you have for...

Dave.

Let's keep this place rockin with some FAKE case studies, OK.

What I mean is, here are the situations, and we'll share our advice.

All of these Fake Case Studies are based on real people and real situations...for the most part. Anyhow, you'll see as we do em.

Dave is 32, father of 2, about to lose his job. He has two months left at work, he'll receive 3 months severance and he has unemployment. Although he is not desperate, he doesn't want to wait around for something else to happen.

Dave wants to take a couple of months and look for his next thing, be it a job or whatever. He wants to find opportunity.

YOUR advice is appreciated.

Here are the steps I told Dave (the real guy) to take.

Please add on whatever you want.

I had Dave consider THREE things.

1) I wanted him to define his POSSIBILITIES
2) He needs to create and understand the RIGHT CONDITIONS
3) He needs to make the RIGHT CHOICES...then PLAN.

His assignment was to spend ONE hour per day for the first week, after work when the kids went to bed...requiring him to do something and sacrifice some TV time... ONE hour per night going over these sites.

Dave was told to write down any idea which appealed to him...or anything he knew for certain he wouldn't do.

The object of this is to create a list of POSSIBILITIES...he was to use a map, a real map...and since he wasn't interested in moving, a map of his county would work. The map serves as a metaphor for possibilities.

He was to search all three sites, inside and out, and then create bookmarks to all the OTHER places these three may take him.

We spent 3 weeks on building lists of what is out there...what he can DO or what he can SELL, and what he might WANT to do.

NO limitations on this part of the brainstorming.

We discussed both the myth of doing what you love and not worrying about the money, to the accuracy of that concept too.

NEXT we talked about the CONDITIONS necessary to DO or to SELL whatever caught his eye...sometimes, this is a critical step overlooked and if ignored it could lead to wasted time and energy and immediate failure too.

What CONDITIONS are required for Dave to do __________________? If you have any ideas...

for example, he can't do photo shoots of any kind without a camera of some kind, so along with this goes...conditions and/or equipment.

What is needed for Dave to make a TRANSACTION, which I explain as an exchange of value, not necessarily money...but an exchange between two entities.

Then, after gathering all this INTELLIGENCE or due diligence, and THINKING about what is needed for what is on his list...

Comes the side by side pros and cons comparison of each possibility...and doing it this way, taking TIME to do a thorough search...which DESPERATE people don't ever have time for, even if their desperation is going on 3 years or more....hmmmm

Using a tool I developed, called the Binary Matrix, Dave was able to get a very good analysis of each opportunity...and create a LIST, which is now prioritized.

So, that is my initial ADVICE to Dave.

In the coming days, we'll look at people of different AGES, a 52 year old may be more interested in making money over starting a business.

Likewise, a broke 22 year at home in deep college debt will see things differently too.

YOU are invited to submit SITUATIONS and we'll brainstorm our way to help them.

EVEN those people, would normally go through my three part process to get them started. Amazingly,over the years, I've had too many people tell me that was too much work...and they were no longer interested in my advice.

OF course, Dave could IMMEDIATELY go out and sell some advertising or clean windows, etc.

But our Dave wants to invest his time NOW, to find a longer range strategy and make sure he doesn't get caught in a cycle of always having to be hitting the streets and selling things...that gets tiring, although useful for raising some cash which he doesn't yet need.